In recent years, liquid crystal display devices are widely used as display devices for monitors, projectors, mobile information terminals, mobile phones, and the like. Generally speaking, a liquid crystal display device allows the transmittance (or reflectance) of a liquid crystal display panel to vary with a driving signal, thus modulating the intensity of light from a light source for irradiating the liquid crystal display panel, whereby images and text characters are displayed. Liquid crystal display devices include direct-viewing type display devices in which images or the like that are displayed on the liquid crystal display panel are directly viewed, projection-type display devices (projectors) in which images or the like that are displayed on the display panel are projected onto a screen through a projection lens in an enlarged size, and so on.
By respectively applying driving voltages which correspond to an image signal to the pixels that are in a regular matrix arrangement, a liquid crystal display device causes a change in the optical characteristics of a liquid crystal layer in each pixel, and regulates the transmitted light in accordance with the optical characteristics of the liquid crystal layer with polarizers (which typically are polarizing plates) being disposed at the front and rear thereof, thereby displaying images, text characters, and the like. In the case of a direct-viewing type liquid crystal display device, these polarizing plates are usually directly attached to a light-entering substrate (the rear substrate) and a light-outgoing substrate (the front substrate or viewer-side substrate) of the liquid crystal display panel.
Methods for applying an independent driving voltage for each pixel include a passive matrix type and an active matrix type. Among these, on a liquid crystal display panel of the active matrix type, switching elements and wiring lines for supplying driving voltages to the pixel electrodes need to be provided. As switching elements, non-linear 2-terminal devices such as MIM (metal-insulator-metal) devices and 3-terminal devices such as TFT (thin film transistor) devices are in use.
On the other hand, in a liquid crystal display device of the active matrix type, when strong light enters a switching element particular a TFT) which is provided on the display panel, its element resistance in an OFF state is decreased, thereby allowing the electric charge which was charged to the pixel capacitor under an applied voltage to be discharged, such that a predetermined displaying state cannot be obtained. Thus, there is a problem of light leakage even in a black state, thus resulting in a decreased contrast ratio.
Therefore, in a liquid crystal display panel of the active matrix type, in order to prevent light from entering the TFTs (in particular channel regions), a light shielding layer (called a black matrix) is provided on a TFT substrate on which the TFTs and the pixel electrodes are provided, or on a counter substrate that opposes the TFT substrate via the liquid crystal layer, for example.
Now, in the case where the liquid crystal display device is a reflection-type liquid crystal display device, decrease in the effective pixel area can be prevented by utilizing reflection electrodes as a light shielding layer. However, in a liquid crystal display device which performs displaying by utilizing transmitted light, providing a light shielding layer in addition to the TFTs, gate bus lines, and source bus lines, which do not transmit light, will allow the effective pixel area to be decreased, thus resulting in a decrease in the ratio of the effective pixel area to the total area of the displaying region, i.e., the aperture ratio.
Note that this tendency becomes more pronounced as liquid crystal display panels become higher in resolution and smaller in size. The reason is that, even if there is a desire to reduce the pixel pitch, constraints such as electrical performance and fabrication techniques make it impossible for the TFTs, the bus lines, etc., to become smaller than certain sizes.
Particularly in recent years, as display devices of mobile devices, e.g., mobile phones, transflective-type liquid crystal display devices have become prevalent, which perform displaying under dark lighting by utilizing light from a backlight that is transmitted through the liquid crystal display panel, and which perform displaying under bright lighting by reflecting light entering the display surface from the surroundings of the liquid crystal display panel. In a transflective-type liquid crystal display device, a region (reflection region) which performs displaying in the reflection mode and a region (transmission region) which performs displaying in the transmission mode are included in each pixel. Therefore, reducing the pixel pitch significantly will lower the ratio of the area of the transmission region to the total area of the displaying region (aperture ratio of the transmission region). Thus, although transflective-type liquid crystal display devices have the advantage of realizing displaying with a high contrast ratio irrespective of the ambient brightness, they have a problem in that their brightness is lowered as the aperture ratio of the transmission region becomes smaller.
As one method for improving the efficiency of light utility of such a liquid crystal display device including transmission regions, Patent Document 1 and Patent Document 2 disclose a method of providing a microlens array for converging light in each pixel on the liquid crystal display panel in order to improve the effective aperture ratio of the liquid crystal display panel. Moreover, the applicant discloses in Patent Document 3 a production method for a liquid crystal display panel with a microlens array, which is suitably used for transmission-type or transflective-type liquid crystal display devices and the like. According to the production method described in Patent Document 3, microlenses can be formed within a pixel in a self-aligning manner, with a high positional precision. Moreover, Patent Document 4 describes a thermocompression apparatus for mounting a flexible printed wiring board to a TFT substrate.    [Patent Document 1] Japanese Laid-Open Patent Publication No. 2005-195733    [Patent Document 2] Japanese Laid-Open Patent Publication No. 2005-208553    [Patent Document 3] Japanese Laid-Open Patent Publication No. 2005-196139    [Patent Document 4] Japanese Laid-Open Patent Publication No. 8-148254